Can I offer you a peanut, or would you rather Ecstasy?

An interesting editorial from NewScientist.com asking whether or not Ecstasy is safer than peanuts. His answer: hells yes! The amount of deaths due to allergies is much higher than deaths caused as a result of the casual consumption of the drug. Does that mean it isn’t dangerous? Well, technically, you could slip and fall and kill yourself while in the shower, but it certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wash! Everything we do has certain risks, but it doesn’t mean everything that is dangerous should be illegal.

What should we be afraid of? Politicians and governments who freak out when people start having honest discussions about drugs:

For evidence of how irrational and lacking in perspective the public debate has become, consider how the advisory council’s chairman, David Nutt, found himself in hot water last weekend for comparing the harm caused by ecstasy to the harm caused by horse riding, or “equasy” as he dubbed it. Nutt’s intention was simply to put Ecstasy in context with other sources of harm. But his comments – which he actually made last month in an editorial in the Journal of Psychopharmacology – caused predictable squeals of outrage and calls for his head.

I’m glad serious websites are starting to discuss drug prohibition in the context of serious scientific research rather than baseless fear mongering. (props to Reason Online for the find)